1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for separating defective dies from a wafer and method thereof, and relates more particularly to a system and method that uses a linear pick-and-place mechanism to carry out pick-and-place operations between a wafer support table assembly and sorting bins, all of which are integrally disposed on a platform.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a typical die packaging process, if semiconductor dies are inspected using an automated optical inspection system between a wafer dicing process and a die sorting process, and the defective dies are removed during the die sorting process, then the yield of the die packaging process can be increased.
A traditional automated optical inspection system comprises a wafer inspection platform and a bin platform. Wafers are placed on the wafer inspection platform for inspection. Defective dies found during inspection are picked and placed in bins disposed on the bin platform using a swing arm mechanism.
However, in a traditional automated optical inspection system, the wafer inspection platform and the bin platform have independent driving apparatuses separate from one another, and for a control system, to simultaneously control two independent driving apparatuses is difficult and an operational delay may frequently occur with the operations of the two driving apparatuses. Moreover, each of the two movable platforms also requires a larger space. Furthermore, with the swing arm mechanisms common to traditional automated inspection systems, one main disadvantage is the requirement of more space for the movement of a swing arm mechanism, and slow speed is another main disadvantage. In addition to the above-mentioned drawbacks, the locations of inspected defective dies on a wafer map are currently marked manually. Manual marking is not only inefficient but also prone to errors.
Current traditional automated optical inspection systems do not have automatic loading and unloading functions for wafers and cannot arrange picked-and-placed dies orderly. Therefore, such systems are still inconvenient to use.
Traditional automated optical inspection systems require large spaces, are difficult to control, have low system stability, cannot automatically load and unload wafers, cannot neatly arrange picked-and-placed dies, and manually mark the locations of defective dies on a wafer map. Therefore, some aspects of such traditional automated optical inspection systems need to be modified.